Share:


Empowering leadership and team creativity: understanding the direct-indirect path

    Ahmad Adeel Affiliation
    ; Samreen Batool Affiliation
    ; Rizwan Ali   Affiliation

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between empowering leadership and team creativity by integrating the theory of group behavior with componential theory of creativity. For this study, data was collected from two sources (343 Subordinates, 67 Supervisors) by temporally dividing data collection process into two points in time for independent, dependent, and mediating variables from employees of a bank operating in Pakistan. Random coefficient analysis technique was used with Mplus 7.0 to analyze nested data for preliminary analysis and analysis of mediation and indirect effects. Mediation was analyzed using the indirect effect of random models and further confirmed the confidence using bootstrapping procedure. Through this study, the researchers tried to explore the inconsistent relationship between empowering leadership behavior and team creativity. It was found that empowering leadership behavior affects the team level creativity of employees directly and indirectly through the mediation of team learning behavior and team psychological empowerment as team process and team emergent states respectively. The results indicated that empowering leadership enhances the learning potential of teams and team empowerment perception which in turn enhances team level creativity. Further research findings, implications, and future research directions also discussed in this research.

Keyword : empowering leadership, team learning behavior, psychological empowerment, team creativity

How to Cite
Adeel, A., Batool, S., & Ali, R. (2018). Empowering leadership and team creativity: understanding the direct-indirect path. Business: Theory and Practice, 19, 242-254. https://doi.org/10.3846/btp.2018.24
Published in Issue
Nov 6, 2018
Abstract Views
1366
PDF Downloads
873
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

References

Ahearn KK, Ferris GR, Hochwarter WA, Douglas C, Ammeter AP (2004) Leader political skill and team performance. Journal of Management 30 (3): 309-327. https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj. jm.2003.01.004

Akgün AE, Keskin H, Byrne JC, Aren S (2007) Emotional and le- arning capability and their impact on product innovativeness and firm performance. Technovation 27 (9): 501-513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2007.03.001

Amabile TM (1996) Creativity in context. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Amabile T, Fisher CM, Pillemer J (2014) IDEO’s culture of helping. Harvard Business Review 92, nos. 1-2 (January- February 2014): 54-61.

Amabile TM (1988) A model of creativity and innovation in organizations. Research in organizational behavior 10 (1): 123-167.

Amabile TM, Schatzel EA, Moneta GB, Kramer SJ (2004) Leader behaviors and the work environment for creativity: perceived leader support. The Leadership Quarterly 15 (1): 5-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.12.003

Aryee S, Chen ZX (2006) Leader–member exchange in a chinese context: antecedents, the mediating role of psychological empowerment and outcomes. Journal of Business Research 59 (7): 793-801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2005.03.003

Bandura A (1997) Self-efficacy: the exercise of control: New York: Freeman.

Bandura A, Locke EA (2003) Negative self-efficacy and goal effects revisited. Journal of applied psychology 88 (1): 87-99. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.87

Baron RM, Kenny DA (1986) The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of perso- nality and social psychology 51 (6): 1173-1182. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173

Block P (1987) The empowered manager: positive political skills at work. Jossey-Bass.

Bunderson JS, Sutcliffe KM (2003) Management team learning orientation and business unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology 88 (3): 552-560. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.3.552

Burris ER (2012) The risks and rewards of speaking up: manage- rial responses to employee voice. Academy of Management Journal 55 (4): 851-875. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0562

Carnabuci G, Diószegi B (2015) Social networks, cognitive style, and innovative performance: a contingency perspective. Academy of Management Journal 58 (3): 881-905. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.1042

Chang HH, Chuang S-S (2011) Social capital and individual mo- tivations on knowledge sharing: Participant involvement as a moderator. Information & management 48 (1): 9-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2010.11.001

Chamberlin M, Newton DW, LePine JA (2018) A meta‐analysis of empowerment and voice as transmitters of high‐performance managerial practices to job performance. Journal of Organi- zational Behavior 2018: 1-18 https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2295

Chen G, Klimoski RJ (2003) The impact of expectations on newcomer performance in teams as mediated by work characteristics, social exchanges, and empowerment. Aca- demy of Management Journal 46 (5): 591-607. http://doi.org/10.5465/30040651

Chen MH, Chang YY, Chang YC (2015) Entrepreneurial orien- tation, social networks, and creative performance: middle managers as corporate entrepreneurs. Creativity and Inno- vation Management 24 (3): 493-507. https://doi.org/10.1111/caim.12108

Chow IHS (2018) The mechanism underlying the empowering leadership-creativity relationship. Leadership & Organization Development Journal 39 (2): 202-217. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-03-2016-0060

Cho HJ, Pucik V (2005) Relationship between innovativeness, quality, growth, profitability, and market value. Strategic management journal 26 (6): 555-575. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.461

Cohen SG, Bailey DE (1997) What makes teams work: group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite. Journal of management 23 (3): 239-290. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0149-2063(97)90034-9

Cohen SG, Chang L, Ledford GE (1997) A hierarchical cons- truct of self-management leadership and its relationship to quality of work life and perceived work group effecti- veness. Personnel Psychology 50 (2): 275-308. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1997.tb00909.x

Conger JA, Kanungo RN (1988) The empowerment process: inte- grating theory and practice. Academy of management review 13 (3): 471-482. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1988.4306983

D’Innocenzo L, Mathieu JE, Kukenberger MR (2016) A meta-analysis of different forms of shared leadership–team performance relations. Journal of Management 42 (7): 1964-1991. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206314525205

DeConinck J, DeConinck MB (2017) The relationship between servant leadership, perceived organizational support, perfor- mance, and turnover among business to business salespeople. Archives of Business Research 5 (10): 57-71. https://doi.org/10.14738/abr.510.3730

Druskat VU, Wheeler JV (2003) Managing from the boundary: the effective leadership of self-managing work teams. Academy of Management Journal 46 (4): 435-457. https://doi. org/10.5465/30040637

Dvir T, Eden D, Avolio BJ, Shamir B (2002) Impact of transforma- tional leadership on follower development and performance: a field experiment. Academy of management journal 45 (4): 735-744. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069307

Dong Y, Bartol KM, Zhang ZX, Li C (2017) Enhancing employee creativity via individual skill development and team know- ledge sharing: Influences of dual‐focused transformational leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior 38 (3): 439-458. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2134

Edmondson A (1999) Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly 44 (2): 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Erdogan B, Bauer TN (2009) Perceived overqualification and its outcomes: the moderating role of empowerment. Journal of applied psychology 94 (2): 557-565. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013528

Erdogan B, Bauer TN, Taylor S (2015) Management commit- ment to the ecological environment and employees: impli- cations for employee attitudes and citizenship behaviors. Human Relations 68 (1): 1669-1691. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726714565723

Ergeneli A, Arı GSl, Metin S (2007) Psychological empowerment and its relationship to trust in immediate managers. Journal of Business Research 60 (1): 41-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.09.012

Finkelstein S, Hambrick DC (1997) Strategic leadership: top executives and their effects on organizations. Donaldson Reviews Finkelstein and Hambrick 22 (2): 221-224. South-Western Publishing Company. https://doi. org/10.1177/031289629702200205

George JM, Zhou J (2001) When openness to experience and conscientiousness are related to creative behavior: an interactional approach. Journal of applied psychology 86 (3): 513-524. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.513

George JM, Zhou J (2002) Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones don’t: the role of context and clarity of feelings. Journal of Applied Psychology 87 (4): 687-697. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.687

Granovetter M, Marsden P, Lin N (1982) Social structure and network analysis. The Network Construction of Individuals and Groups. Political Science 572/ Sociology 585.

Hackman JR, Oldham GR (1980) Work redesign. MA: Addison- Wesley. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960118200700110

Harris KJ, Wheeler AR, Kacmar KM (2009) Leader–member exchange and empowerment: direct and interactive effects on job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and performance. The Leadership Quarterly 20 (3): 371-382. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.03.006

Hechanova-Alampay R, Beehr TA (2001) Empowerment, span of control, and safety performance in work teams after workforce reduction. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 6 (4): 275-282. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.6.4.275

Hempel PS, Zhang Z-X, Han Y (2012) Team empowerment and the organizational context decentralization and the contras- ting effects of formalization. Journal of Management 38 (2): 475-501. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309342891

Hirst G, Van Knippenberg D, Zhou J (2009) A cross-level perspective on employee creativity: goal orientation, team learning behavior, and individual creativity. Academy of Management Journal 52 (2): 280-293. https://doi.org/10.5465/ amj.2009.37308035

House RJ, Dessler G (1975) The path-goal theory of leadership. Journal of Contemporary Business 3: 81-97.

Humphrey SE, Nahrgang JD, Morgeson FP (2007) Integrating motivational, social, and contextual work design features: a meta-analytic summary and theoretical extension of the work design literature. Journal of Applied Psychology 92 (5): 1332-1356. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.5.1332

Ibarra H (1993) Network centrality, power, and innovation invol- vement: determinants of technical and administrative roles. Academy of Management Journal 36 (3): 471-501. https:// doi.org/10.5465/256589

Isenberg D (1988) Managerial thinking: an inquiring into how senior managers think. Book manuscript.

Janssen O (2001) Fairness perceptions as a moderator in the curvilinear relationships between job demands, and job performance and job satisfaction. Academy of management Journal 44 (5): 1039-1050. https://doi.org/10.5465/3069447

Jung DI, Sosik JJ (2002) Transformational leadership in work groups the role of empowerment, cohesiveness, and collective-efficacy on perceived group performance. Small group research 33 (3): 313-336. https://doi.org/10.1177/10496402033003002

Katz D, Kahn RL (1978) The social psychology of organizations, New York: Wiley, 1978: 1-838.

Kirkman BL, Rosen B (1999) Beyond self-management: an- tecedents and consequences of team empowerment. Academy of Management Journal 42 (1): 58-74. https://doi. org/10.5465/256874

Knippenberg Dv, Dreu Cd, Homan AC (2004) Work group diversity and group performance: an integrative model and research agenda. Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (6): 1008-1022. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.6.1008

Langfred CW (2007) The downside of self-management: a longi- tudinal study of the effects tf conflict on trust, autonomy, and task interdependence in self-managing teams. Academy of management Journal 50 (4): 885-900. https://doi.org/10.5465/ amj.2007.26279196

Latham GP, Winters DC, Locke EA (1994) Cognitive and motiva- tional effects of participation: a mediator study. Journal of Organizational Behavior 15 (1): 49-63. https://doi.org/10.1002/ job.4030150106

Lawler EE, Mohrman SA, Benson G (2001) Organizing for high performance: employee involvement, tqm, reengineering, and knowledge management in the fortune 1000. The ceo report: Jossey-Bass, Book.

Liden RC, Wayne SJ, Sparrowe RT (2000) An examination of the mediating role of psychological empowerment on the relations between the job, interpersonal relationships, and work outcomes. Journal of applied psychology 85 (3): 407-416. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.3.407

Locke EA, Alavi M, Wagner JA III (1997) Participation in decision making: an information exchange perspective. In G. R. Ferris (Ed) Research in personnel and human resources manage- ment 15: 293-331. US: Elsevier Science/JAI Press.

Mathieu JE, Heffner TS, Goodwin GF, Salas E, Cannon-Bowers JA (2000) The influence of shared mental models on team process and performance. Journal of applied psychology 85 (2): 273-283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.2.273

Mathieu JE, Taylor SR (2006) Clarifying conditions and decision points for mediational type inferences in organizational be- havior. Journal of Organizational Behavior 27 (8): 1031-1056. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.406

Mathieu JE, Hollenbeck JR, van Knippenberg D, Ilgen DR (2017) A century of work teams in the journal of applied psycholo- gy. Journal of Applied Psychology 102 (3): 452. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000128

Mills PK, Ungson GR (2003) Reassessing the limits of structural empowerment: organizational constitution and trust as controls. Academy of management Review 28 (1): 143-153. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2003.8925254

Muller D, Judd CM, Yzerbyt VY (2005) When moderation is mediated and mediation is moderated. Journal of perso- nality and social psychology 89 (6): 852-563. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.852

Ng TW (2017) Transformational leadership and performance outcomes: analyses of multiple mediation pathways. The Le- adership Quarterly 28 (3): 385-417. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.11.008

Ohly S, Kase R, Škerlavaj M (2010) Networks for generating and for validating ideas: the social side of creativity. Innovation 12 (1): 41-52. https://doi.org/10.5172/impp.12.1.41

Oldham GR, Cummings A (1996) Employee creativity: personal and contextual factors at work. Academy of management journal 39 (3): 607-634. https://doi.org/10.5465/256657

Perry-Smith JE (2014) Social network ties beyond nonredundan- cy: an experimental investigation of the effect of knowledge content and tie strength on creativity. Journal of Applied Psychology 99 (5): 831-846. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036385

Rosenthal T, Zimmerman B (1978) Social learning and cognitio- nacademic press. New York.

Shalley CE, Gilson LL (2004) What leaders need to know: a re- view of social and contextual factors that can foster or hinder creativity. The Leadership Quarterly 15 (1): 33-53. http://doi. org.10.1016/j.leaqua.2003.12.004

Shalley CE, Zhou J, Oldham GR (2004) The effects of personal and contextual characteristics on creativity: where should we go from here? Journal of management 30 (6): 933-958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jm.2004.06.007

Spreitzer G, Garrett L, Bacevice P (2015) Should your company embrace coworking? MIT Sloan Management Review, Book.

Spreitzer GM (1995) Psychological empowerment in the wor- kplace: dimensions, measurement, and validation. Academy of management Journal 38 (5): 1442-1465. https://doi.org/10.5465/256865

Spreitzer GM (2008) Taking stock: a review of more than twenty years of research on empowerment at work. Handbook of organizational behavior, 54-72.

Srivastava A, Bartol KM, Locke EA (2006) Empowering leaders- hip in management teams: effects on knowledge sharing, efficacy, and performance. Academy of management Journal 49 (6): 1239-1251. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2006.23478718

Stasser G, Titus W (1985) Pooling of unshared information in group decision making: biased information sampling during discussion. Journal of personality and social psychology 48 (6): 1467-1478. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.48.6.1467

Staw BM, Epstein LD (2000) What bandwagons bring: effects of popular management techniques on corporate performance, reputation, and ceo pay. Administrative Science Quarterly 45 (3): 523-556 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2667108

Subramaniam M, Youndt MA (2005) The influence of intellectual capital on the types of innovative capabilities. Academy of Management Journal 48 (3): 450-463. https://doi.org/10.5465/ amj.2005.17407911

Taggar S (2001) Group composition, creative synergy, and group performance. The Journal of Creative Behavior 35 (4): 261-286. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.2001.tb01050.x

Venkataramani V, Zhou L, Wang M, Liao H, Shi J (2016) Social networks and employee voice: The influence of team members’ and team leaders’ social network positions on employee voice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 132: 37-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2015.12.001

Van Knippenberg D, De Dreu C, & Homan A (2004) Work group diversity and group performance: an integrative model and research agenda. Journal of Applied Psychology 89 (6): 1008-1022. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.6.1008

Wegner DM (1987) Transactive memory: a contemporary analysis of the group mind. In: Mullen B, Goethals GR (Eds) Theo- ries of group behavior. Springer Series in Social Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612- 4634-3_9

Zhang S, Ke X, Frank Wang XH, Liu J (2018) Empowering leaders- hip and employee creativity: a dual‐mechanism perspective. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. Online version/In Press. https://doi.org/10.1111/joop.12219

Zhou J, George JM (2003) Awakening employee creativity: the role of leader emotional intelligence. The leadership quarterly 14 (4): 545-568. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(03)00051-1

Zhou J, Shin SJ, Brass DJ, Choi J, Zhang Z-X (2009) Social networ- ks, personal values, and creativity: evidence for curvilinear and interaction effects. Journal of Applied Psychology 94 (6): 1544-1552. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016285